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THE IDEAL: 
ITS REALIZATION 



THE IDEAL: 
ITS REALIZATION 



Lucy C. McGee 



- 









BOSTON 
JAMES H. WEST COMPANY 



£fifeV* 



THE LIBRARY OF 
0OHGRESS, 

Two GottEe Received 

NOV. 9 1901 

OOPVRK3HT ENTRY 

CLASS #-XXa Mo. 

copy a 



Copyright, 1901 
By Lucy C. McGee 



PAULINE AGASSIZ SHAW 

THIS RAY 

WITH ITS POTENCY, PROMISE AND PROPHECY 

IS 

^ffecttonatelg ©efcicatefc 



FOREWORD 



The movement known as the " New 
Thought " deals with nothing new. It is 
spiritualistic and leads to the dominion of 
Spirit. The Spirit cannot be appropriated, 
narrowed or limited by any sect reading into 
it a personal or particular meaning. It is 
the Universal, above name, number or sect. 

The New Thought is, indeed, but the 
revival and emphasis of the oldest and 
rarest of the ages. It is held to be vital 
and prophetic, not because it is old or new, 
but because it is true. 

The movement rests on the realization 
and affirmation of soul -wisdom. That it 

7 



FOREWORD 

may fulfill its purpose, it uses willing and 
cheerful vehicles of various degrees of large- 
ness and finish. 

There is but one Truth ; that is mystical ; 
it is locked in man's sub, normal and super 
consciousness. The rationale of existence, 
health, well-being, cosmos, is found when the 
revelation unveils the Soul's latent Light and 
Power. 

This book, the first of a promised series, 
is a concise presentation of that truth as it 
is realized in one sphere of consciousness. 
It is intended to be an impelling suggestion 
of the possibility of rendering the immanency 
of the All-in-all a vivid realization. 

l. c. M. 

Boston, August 2Q, igoi. 



CONTENTS 



/. PAGE 

Introduction . . 13 

Realism : Its Relation to Idealism . . . . 15 

The Ideal defined by a posteriori Psychology . 1 9 

The Ideal defined by a priori Psychology . . 32 

No Ideal in the Exoteric World 34 

The Ideal and the Image Related . . . . 37 

Are there Ideals ? 41 

//. 
The Initiative of the Ideal 46 

///. 
The Content of the Ideal 49 

The Light of the Sun. 

Freedom. 

Omnipotence. 

Omniscience. 

Omnipresence. 

Omniconsciousness. 

Omnilove. 

C hrist-consciousness. 

IV. 
The Unfoldment of the Ideal ..... 61 

V. 

The Realization of the Ideal 66 

VI. 

Doing issues from Being 68 

The Spiritual Brotherhood 71 

The Identity of the Ideal and the Self . . . 74 

9 



" The world is wise, for the world is old ; 
Five thousand years their tale have told ; 
Yet the world is not happy, as the world 

might be : 
Why is it ? Why is it ? Oh, answer me ! 

" The world is strong, with an awful strength, 
And full of life in its breadth and length ; 
Yet the world is not happy, as the world 

might be : 
Why is it ? Why is it ? Oh, answer me ! 

" Poor world ! if thou cravest a better day, 
Remember that Christ must have His own 

way. 
I mourn thou art not as thou mightest be, 
But the love of God would do all for thee." 



THE IDEAL: 
ITS REALIZATION 

"KNOW THYSELF" 

Introduction. 

Declarations and affirmations relative to 
the Ideal are as multitudinous as the leaves 
of the forest. Every great man has con- 
ceived of the Ideal, or of ideals, and given 
forth, in literary form, or in the record of 
his life, that conception. Every man, great 
or small, who has lifted himself above the 
sense-life, recognizes what he is pleased to 
call ideals. From the Vedas to the Twen- 
tieth Century psychology, from Plato to the 
most recent popular writers and lecturers, 
13 



THE IDEAL 

the way is literally strewn with so-called 
ideals or their wrecks. 

Wherever you are in intellectual develop- 
ment, or in spiritual unfoldment, you will 
find, along that pathway, something that 
will correspond to your conception of the 
Ideal. 



14" 



ITS REALIZATION 

Realism : Its Relation to Idealism. 

The modern movement of realism, which 
has left various traces in philosophy, lit- 
erature, art and science, did quite as much 
to render cognizable the fundamental prin- 
ciples of idealism as to set forth the data 
upon which realism is based. Zola, for ex- 
ample, is really an apostle of idealism, for 
the bare and naked data of so-called realism 
which he and his sympathetic co-laborers 
amassed are a silent and irrefutable protest 
against that which they endeavored to es- 
tablish. Evil is its own objection ; sick- 
ness, its own denial ; death, its own contra- 
diction. 

The discussion that accompanies the move- 
ment is, however, to be considered rich and 
fruitful if it does naught else than call 
men's attention to the fact that there is 
somewhat which thought, in one stage of its 
development, recognizes as realism. The 
emphasis of any abnormality of thought is 
15 



THE IDEAL 

a safe indication that the normal will soon 
obtain. Stress laid upon error will bring 
its antithetical truth into the foreground of 
consciousness. Living in the ground floor 
of one's palace may be made to seem com- 
fortable for a time, but as soon as a man is 
conscious that he abides in the lowest story 
he begins to unfold a deeper consciousness 
that encompasses the upper and uppermost. 
No man who is conscious of his capacity to 
mount and soar will remain on the plane of 
realism. The aspiration of his inner and 
truer nature will lure him into the lucidity 
of a rarer atmosphere. 

A full presentation of the data of realism, 
and their acceptance by school or sect, is a 
declaration, although it may not be formally 
expressed, of a readiness and need for a 
flight of thought. One thinker or observer 
who finds his life and love on the plane of 
realism, and boldly sets forth the picture he 
creates in his own mind, does more for the 
16 



ITS REALIZATION 

cause of the higher idealism than a legion who 
have life and love on intermediate and com- 
promising grounds. 

An incident occurring in a class in Eng- 
lish Literature may be here recalled : 

The idealistic and realistic novels were 
being characterized. The prevailing dogma 
was stated by the teacher, — that the real- 
istic novel deals with experience ; with cross- 
sections, as it were, of the ordinary sweep 
of life : in short, it has to do with com- 
mon things in existence ; it takes upon 
itself an every-day sort of air, expressing, 
in routine, evil, ignorance, disease, and other 
commonplaces. The idealistic novel, on the 
other hand, is engaged with psychological 
problems. The inner life and soul are 
brought under the perceiving and analytic 
eye of the psychologist. A young woman, 
demure and serious minded, with an expres- 
sion of wounded astonishment upon her 
face, asked : "Is not the soul as common 
17 



THE IDEAL 

as anything ? " The maiden, church - bred 
though she was, saw intuitively the larger 
truth of soul, which the advocates of realism 
failed to see intellectually. 



18 



ITS REALIZATION 

The Ideal defined by a posteriori Psychol- 
ogy. 

What is the Ideal ? Must not the eyes be 
turned in the right direction before we may 
hope to behold it ? Need we expect to under- 
stand the deep, hidden things of life and 
thought unless we know whether they are 
subjective or objective, whether they are of 
matter and existence or of spirit and being ? 
Should we not have some sort of certainty 
whether that which is dearest to us lies in 
the plane of desire, of intellect, or in the 
sphere of Soul ? Is it not imperative that 
one should read the answer in these and 
similar questions before one may consciously 
unfold the depth and height of one's own 
possibilities and realize the Ideal ? 

According to one of the foremost psychol- 
ogists of this or any other country, — 

" An ideal must be something intellectually 
conceived, something of which we are not un- 
19 



THE IDEAL 

conscious if we have it ; and it must carry 
with it that sort of outlook, uplift, bright- 
ness that goes with all intellectual facts." 

"There must be a novelty in an ideal, 
novelty for him whom the ideal grasps." 

" Ideals are relative to the life that enter- 
tains them. This shows there is nothing 
absolutely ideal." 

" Taken naturally, abstractly, and individ- 
ually, you see that some ideals are the cheap- 
est things in life. Everybody has them in 
some shape or other, personal or general, 
sound or mistaken, high or low, and the 
most worthless sentimentalists and dreamers, 
drunkards, shirks and verse makers, who never 
show a grain of effort or endeavor, possibly 
have them on the most copious scale." 

These brief, pointed quotations are here 

presented for the most obvious reasons. The 

quotations are from a master mind whose 

philosophic insight is not gainsaid. They 

20 



ITS REALIZATION 

are a beautifully clear and logical statement 
of what the Ideal is not. No " soulless " psy- 
chology could give a fairer formulation of the 
Ideal's negation. 

Viewed from the vantage ground of the 
New Psychology, defined as "the science of 
the Soul," the Ideal would remain forever 
unknown and unknowable if it waited upon 
being intellectually conceived. The New 
Psychology holds it to be occult, but also 
holds that it is your certain and indisputable 
possession, just as you possess yourself 
whether you are conscious of the self or 
not. To become conscious that you possess 
it is the aim of Being within experience. 

" Intellectual facts," it may readily be 
granted, do carry with them " a sort of out- 
look, uplift, brightness.' ' This, all must con- 
cede who have lived the intellectual life and 
reveled joyously, though blind to higher 
things, in its facts and hypotheses. 

If there is no inlook, what glory can sur- 
21 



THE IDEAL 

pass the " outlook " ? Facts and interest on 
the plane of intellect uplift one and give a 
certain freedom from the desire-plane. And 
yet, if the intellectualist would but ask, in 
the moments when he is alone with himself : 
" Does not my thought rest with and serve 
the lower self to the exclusion of the higher ? 
Does not my intellectual endeavor pertain to 
the purely personal and transient conditions 
of thought and life?" — he would sigh for 
an uplift that would place him fairly in the 
realm of the Self that transcends desire, 
intellect, problems and phases of personality 
and existence. In no degree would we under- 
estimate or undervalue the relative importance 
and bearing of intellectual uplift, delight, 
development. The evolution of mind pro- 
vides for these on its own plane. But 
intellectual development, however enjoyable 
and necessary for a career of the personal 
self, will never bring satisfaction — it is not 
enough. 

22 



ITS REALIZATION 

The whole realm of intellectual facts bears 
the same relation to spiritual realization that 
desire bears to aspiration. The former leads 
outward and downward ; the latter, inward 
and upward. The former leads out to the 
circumference ; the latter, in to the Center 
of Being. 

The brightness of the whole world of 
intellect and objectivity is a shadow, aye, 
darkness, when its values are measured by 
the " Light that never was on sea or land." 
The sort of uplift and brightness that intel- 
lectual facts engender differs not only in 
degree, but in kind, from that which accom- 
panies realization of Spiritual truths of 
Being. 

Spiritually discerned, the Ideal is as eternal 
as the everlasting hills, the same to-day, yes- 
terday and forever; and therefore it is relative 
neither to life nor thought, nor to the world. 
The Ideal is as absolute as is the reality of 
Divinity. The Old, or a posteriorly Psychol- 
23 



THE IDEAL 

ogist may term ideals the cheapest things in 
life ; but should he once realize that the Ideal 
is his own divine and eternal Self he would 
worship it as his dearest and divinest pos- 
session. Let him be still and know that, 
knowing which, he may know all things. 

Instead of declaring with the "soulless" 
psychology that " everybody has ideals," the 
New Psychologist affirms that the heavenly 
vision of the Ideal remains forever veiled 
from the timorous, the frivolous and faint- 
hearted. The Ideal is glorious in its radiance 
and purity. Only those who are the pure in 
heart, those who have overcome the flesh, the 
world, and desire, are vouchsafed that Celes- 
tial Vision. 

The inadequacy of the method is apparent 
when the Old Psychology seeks for truth but 
pushes not beyond the plane of facts ; when 
it holds, for the object of its endeavor, the 
perception of reality, and then rivets its 
attention upon phenomena. The psychologist 
24 



ITS REALIZATION 

who declares his science "soulless/' — and 
who, in the experimental school, does not 
implicitly or explicitly so declare ? — and then 
defines psychology as the "Science of the 
Mind," need not hope to scale the heights of 
truth with power so limited. One may know 
mountains of facts observed in the laboratory, 
in any and all of its departments, and yet not 
realize the truth that substands all facts and 
every observation. 

Has empirical psychology, then, as a sci- 
ence of the mind, a modus operandi for solv- 
ing problems, even on its own plane ? 

If it were possible to separate the problems 
of mind, based on organism, coincident with 
brain and nervous system, from those deeper 
and diviner ones of Being, and if psychology 
could solve the former, there would still be 
an immeasurable void, a yawning chasm of 
chaos, between the self and the Ideal. 

How can psychology, the Science of the 
Mind, even formulate the deep problems that 
25 



THE IDEAL 

belong to the real nature of man ? Whence 
its insight to penetrate into the hidden truth 
of reality ? Being phenomenal, can it encom- 
pass the real ? How can that which is tem- 
poral reveal the concealed, the Eternal within 
the transient ? 

It is held by the a priori psychology that 
all problems are soluble, all questions answer- 
able : but that the solution and the answer 
logically must be sought in the sphere of the 
problems and questions, which is indeed the 
sphere of Causality. The astronomer obtains 
no very satisfactory knowledge of the comet 
observed to shoot across his sky, only to 
disappear below the horizon. He gazes stead- 
fastly upon the ascendant star and learns its 
place and nature. But the secret of the star 
is occult ; the reality evades and eludes even 
the wondrous eye of the telescope. Reality 
is in the sphere of neither telescope nor 
microscope. In consciousness alone is truth 
perceived and realized. 
26 



ITS REALIZATION 

If, then, the Ideal be not within the sphere 
of the Science of the Mind, does not the 
psychologist of the experimental school by 
limitation, self-imposed, lock himself in the 
outer court of his being ? 

The modern philosopher and scientist oc- 
cupy the ground of a hero. They stand 
fearless. All bow to their heroic endeavor 
to know Nature and human nature. An 
imaginary foe confronts them, they would be 
victorious. If they must surrender, they will 
fall facing the enemy. 

Have they not, however, so hedged them- 
selves about with limitations, for the sake 
of the modern delirious desire for fact and 
observation, that experience and existence 
have become the premise, the goal, the way ? 
Let the philosopher and scientist but tran- 
scend the illusion that the objective world is 
the sphinx whose riddle they would solve, 
and they would be the first to realize, when 
released from their dream, the inordinate 
27 



THE IDEAL 

worship they have given to phenomena and 
the objective phase of Nature, thought and 
humanity. 

This reign of fact, mind, realism, activity, 
may be a logical step in the development 
of thought. But is there a need for the 
bravest and best to engross themselves for 
continuous decades in the treadmill of phe- 
nomena ? There is no quarrel to make, 
from any point of view, with either Being 
or existence, soul or mind, aspiration or 
desire, with truth or fact, — it is all wisely 
ordained. 

But Divinity does not want men to lose 
themselves in the non-essential ; it inspires 
them to find themselves in the essential. 
Divinity does not hold men to the plane of 
fact, but urges them into the sphere of truth. 
Divinity does not enslave men with desire, 
but implants within them the freedom of 
Divine aspiration. Seek and seek ; think and 
think: at last man must find that Divinity 
28 



ITS REALIZATION 

does not appear, but is to be realized in 
consciousness. 

One day has the value of a life-long ex- 
perience. One fact of Nature has written in 
it the nature of the universe. The knowl- 
edge that experience brings will never resolve 
itself into the realization of truth and Being. 
The seeker after truth who clings to exist- 
ence may delve, doubt, endeavor, question, 
through innumerable incarnations, over the 
value of a quarter of a dollar. His day of 
millennium will come when he awakens to 
the deeper value of the dollar, and recognizes 
that one-fourth has no absolute value in itself, 
but that its relative value is derived from the 
unit. 

The day of joy will come when the search- 
ers after hidden realities will awaken to them- 
selves, the source of the highest wisdom, in 
whom alone is the absolutely Eternal to be 
found. Then just and righteous values will 
be placed on experience and thought, and on 
29 



THE IDEAL 

the soul. The fractions will be wisely related 
to the whole only when the value of the One 
is realized. 

"A mere, base fraud " is what the frac- 
tional, phenomenal world is, unless it leads to 
a realization of the infinite and holy One. 
Ten thousand incarnations will avail naught 
as mere re-embodiments on the plane of gen- 
eration. The fulfillment of one or a thousand 
incarnations is not generation, but regenera- 
tion. Experience that lures us away from the 
subjective, where alone the Eternal is sov- 
ereign, is the direst " fraud " that holds men 
to the limitations and the perplexities of 
finitude. 

The intellectualist and moralist may sacri- 
fice themselves on the altar of thought or 
humanity, in its objective nature, and if they 
come not into realization of the truth of con- 
sciousness they have missed the goal of life 
and the Ideal. As the Light of the truth of 
Being dawns in consciousness, reason, argu- 
30 



ITS REALIZATION 

ment, the hero, vanish ; they will find their 
place. The imaginary foe disappears, the 
struggle ceases. Spirit becomes conscious 
of its own possessions, unfolds its powers, 
and every lover of Truth with earnest 
endeavor will then not only see, but per- 
ceive : not only hear, but understand, the 
things which the Spirit reveals. 



3i 



THE IDEAL 

The Ideal defined by a priori Psychology, 

The word " Idea " comes from the Greek ; 
it means " to see." The Idea is that which 
is seen, not without, but within. It does not 
belong to the world of outlook, but to the 
world of inlook. Turn the vision within, and 
you will perceive the Idea. It is, therefore, 
not of the earth, nor of matter, nor of objec- 
tivity. It is mystical, spiritual, subjective, 
and transcendent in height. 

The word "image/' on the other hand, is 
derived from the Latin, imitari, to imitate. 
Look without for the image : it is a creation 
under the law that operates through Nature 
and the phenomenal world. The image is 
synchronous with the physical eye ; the Idea, 
with the spiritual. 

The significance of the Idea is therefore 
universal or spiritual. Should Spirit become 
particular, it would lose both its universality 
and spirituality. The Idea is of the realm 
of the subjective consciousness, and it touches 
32 



ITS REALIZATION 

the individual just where he is in spiritual 
unfoldment. 

When Plato or Emerson perceives the Idea 
and gives it forth, we recognize it as belong- 
ing neither to Plato nor to Emerson. The 
Idea, passing from the sphere of Being into 
that of the mind, following the same law that 
governs the objectification of the Subject, the 
materialization of Spirit, the specialization of 
Power, the phenomenalization of Being, takes 
upon itself form. The thought, the idea, 
insphered in form, then becomes Platonic, 
Emersonian. 

Following the same a priori principle, 
Ideation is the faculty or capacity of recog- 
nizing or bringing Ideas into consciousness. 
Ideation is, therefore, inner, in the subjective 
consciousness, in the sphere where form is 
not. The Imagination, on the other hand, 
is the power to call up mental images ; it is 
outer, in the sphere of mind, where form is. 



33 



THE IDEAL 

No Ideal in the Exoteric World. 

The Ideal is, therefore, never external; 
and yet professional men, for example, talk 
of ideals. What do they mean ? Evidently, 
nothing more than goals. The lawyer places 
yonder a goal, the creation of his own imag- 
ination. He reaches out toward it, but by 
and by the direction of the race-track changes, 
the lawyer leaves his profession and enters, 
it may be, the field of medicine. Then 
another goal is erected, another ambition is 
conceived. 

A young man has an ambition for political 
honors. He exclaims : " Gladstone is my 
ideal ! " But Gladstone can be nothing more, 
to any man, than a pattern, a model. 

The military commander talks of Caesar 
as his ideal. If any commander whatsoever 
considers the great Caesar more than a model, 
or if he endeavors to realize the model instead 
of himself, he will not say with the world's 
greatest commander, "Veni, vidi> vici y " but, 
34 



ITS REALIZATION 

instead, " I came, I saw, I was conquered." 
Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, 
but unto the Ideal what is the Ideal's. 

The student of literature who desires to 
identify himself with the literati will study 
models, patterns, masterpieces, as helps and 
props, until he finds himself. When he is 
conscious of the power within, which is as 
universal as spirit, he no longer looks with- 
out for model, method or material. He is 
grasped by the inner power, and becomes its 
medium, — then goals, ambitions, plans, pat- 
terns, models, designs fall away, and he 
stands alone with himself, with the power 
which is focused within. When a man 
thinks, acts, realizes from the depth and fire 
of his own life and center, he ceases not only 
to have an active interest in, but to be aware 
of, objective standards and measuring-rods. 
A consciousness of that power in its fullness 
and unlimited nature is the prerogative of 
the Soul. 

35 



THE IDEAL 

Commanders, statesmen, professional men 
work upon foreign material while they en- 
deavor to make themselves like a model. 
No man conceives of greatness till he sets 
about realizing the Ideal. He then turns 
his thought backward upon the Self, ceases 
to dwell in personal thought and activity. 
The Ideal is not a copy, it is the original ; 
it is not an image, it is that which is 
imaged. 

To be great is to realize that Ideal ; to 
be pure is to abide in its lucid and trans- 
parent Light. 



36 



ITS REALIZATION 

The Ideal and the Image Related. 

The nature of the Ideal renders it esoteric ; 
while the image is exoteric. The Ideal is 
formless, in the sphere of Being ; the image 
has to do with form, in the sphere of the 
Beautiful. The former obtains in conscious- 
ness, the latter exploits the field of mind. 
Consciousness, therefore, polarizes in Ideation ; 
the mind in the imagination. Ideation is, 
then, the power of the soul that recognizes 
the sublime in Being. The imagination is 
the power of the mind that creates form 
beautiful in existence. 

Ideation is in the sphere of the perfect 
and the Absolute ; the imagination is rampant 
in the midst of the imperfect and the relative. 
The latter may scale the heights of intellect 
and the depths of desire; the former is op- 
erative alone in the sphere of the pure in 
heart. 

The imagination is a creative power operat- 
ing under the same law that creates external 
37 



THE IDEAL 

Nature and the world of form. The Ideal 
is not that which is created under the law ; 
it is the law, supreme. It is causal and 
final. It is a leading of the Spirit which 
becomes law unto itself. 

Does the artist, then, merely reproduce 
what the creative power has produced ? No ! 
but the artist's creation is identical with 
Nature's, though on a different plane. Both 
creations are under the dominion of the law 
of existence. It is the creative power that 
produces form, whether on the plane of con- 
scious Nature, or on the plane of self-conscious 
mind. Wherever it may appear, form is 
phenomenal ; it is exoteric and relative. In 
the sphere of the Beautiful, form is the acme 
of objective excellence, the apotheosis of exist- 
ence. The deep significance of this teaching 
may be perceived, when it is applied, on all 
planes of life and art, in Nature and human 
nature. 

Take for example, a plant. When it estab- 

38 



ITS REALIZATION 

lishes an affinity for the Idea of the tree, for 
the Ideal, its form will be evolved, perfect. 
The Idea, involved, is always perfect. To 
build the evolved (form) identical with the 
involved (Ideal), the form must be held to 
the Idea, not the Idea to the form. The 
process is one of upbuilding, uplifting. Exalt 
the form to the level of the Ideal and it 
will proclaim what manner of content it 
vehicles. 

The Ideal is valuable, then, only as it is 
beheld in its pure and perfect absoluteness. 
Then, by the power that is ours, not by the 
mere asking, but by unfolding and conserving, 
we may build the form and color it, according 
to the content immanent in consciousness. 

The Christs have been typical illustrations 
of this divine truth of the supremacy of the 
Ideal over form and phenomenon. 

The Eternal, which is from everlasting to 
everlasting, is uncreate. It is within every 
object, manifestation, thought and emotion ; 
39 



THE IDEAL 

but it is not contained by them. The form 
is fleeting, relative ; look not there for Divin- 
ity. A transient thing, — how can it express 
the permanent ? Can the shadow express 
the substance, or the relative the Absolute ? 

Causality of form is from above and within. 
Within is Being; it is forever unmanifest. 
Look within. The spiritually unfolded will 
perceive Spirit in bird, stone, mind ; in tone, 
flower and man. Awaken the everlasting 
fountain of eternal life and power within, and 
Spirit will discern Spirit, even as Divinity 
realizes Divinity. 



40 



ITS REALIZATION 

Are there Ideals? 

Not unfrequently, thinkers, philosophic, eth- 
ical, write in a charming and lucid manner of 
growing ideals, developing ideals. They find 
ideals, Greek, Christian ; medieval, modern ; 
positive, negative ; particular and individual. 
Such writers seem to grasp intellectually 
and esthetically ideals, without a realization 
of the Ideal. 

A popular author writes of an " ideal of 
natural prosperity dominating men's minds." 
In what sphere of his Being, or what plane 
of his life, does he find an ideal that dom- 
inates ? True, men are dominated by some- 
thing they call natural prosperity; but what 
is the spiritual relation between material pros- 
perity and the Ideal ? Men are dominated 
by many things ; but how can an Ideal 
assume so ignoble a relation to man ? Only 
an influence which comes from man's lower 
self, such as evil tendency taking a thought- 
form on the plane of desire, can dominate. 
4i 



THE IDEAL 

Ideal faultlessless inspires and glorifies the 
son of man. 

When one reads in a New Thought mag- 
azine of "a man who chooses the accumula- 
tion of poverty as his ideal " ; of elevating or 
uplifting the popular ideals ; or when one 
reads, even in a book, that "half the evils 
of life depend upon our following wrong 
ideals," one is impelled to ask, What sort of 
erratic things are ideals, with so pliant and 
yet so untrustworthy a nature ? 

They who have caught a glimpse of the 
Heavenly Vision, and believe, are ready to 
exclaim : Hosanna ! altogether lovely, perfect, 
holy ! the source only of divine inspiration 
and exaltation of Soul. 

The spiritually discerning cannot give 
assent to the teaching of a much-read author 
when he says, — 

" The basis of the highest life possible to 
us is perhaps the Greek ideal rather than the 
42 



ITS REALIZATION 

Christian. If the Christian is higher, the 
Greek is the larger and the saner one." 

And yet, in another breath, he declares 
the Christian ideal to be " the saving ideal." 

The attitude of many scientific, ethical, 
and esthetic minds to the Teachings of the 
Nazarene is that they are founded on self- 
abnegation, and that to follow the Christ- 
teachings would destroy all that the world 
values in civilization. The Nazarene did not 
come to destroy but to fulfill. Not only did 
he not disregard any valuable phase of life 
or experience, but, on the contrary, empha- 
sized with every thought, act and breath the 
eternal importance of attending to the essen- 
tial. He healed the sick, cleansed the leper, 
fed the hungry multitudes, cast out devils, 
raised the dead. If self-abnegation means 
abiding in the consciousness of the Power of 
the Infinite and the significance of the Eter- 
nal ; in the realization of health, harmony, 
43 



THE IDEAL 

poise, — and is this not the Christ-conscious- 
ness which avails ? — shall we then compare 
"the saving ideal" with Greek or with any- 
other ? Shall we not rather embrace it as 
the only Ideal that can save us from sickness, 
hunger, blindness, obsession, death ? 

If the unfoldment of the Christ-conscious- 
ness should destroy civilization, with all its 
inventions, discoveries, social and govern- 
mental institutions; its culture and intellect- 
ual development ; its desires and wants which 
can never be gratified ; its exaggerated and 
erroneous views of life ; its wars and diplo- 
macies, — would not humanity be exalted 
rather than degraded ; blest rather than 
cursed ; freed rather than enslaved ? 

The Ideal is a standard of perfection. 

In the Temple of Being is the Ideal. In 
the sacred arcana of that temple are its 
initiative, unfoldment, realization. 



44 



ITS REALIZATION 



" Within the silent center of the earth 

My mansion is : where I have lived insphered 

From the beginning, and around my sleep 

Have woven all the wondrous imagery 

Of this dim spot which mortals call the 

world, — 
Infinite depths of unknown elements 
Massed into one impenetrable mask, 
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins 
Of gold and stones and adamantine iron. 
And as a veil in which I walk through heaven 
I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, 

and clouds, 
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns 
In the dark space of interstellar air." 

— Shelley, 



45 



THE IDEAL 

The Initiative of the Ideal. 

The initiative of the Ideal is heavenly. It 
is with the birth of the Soul. By the birth 
of the Soul we do not refer to its clothing 
itself and coming into manifestation ; for the 
Soul may come into manifestation many 
times after it is born. By the birth of the 
Soul we refer to its crossing the line that 
separates consciousness in Nature from self- 
consciousness in man. 

In the mighty sweep of time and tide 
there comes a form, on the plane of evolution, 
in which the involved has awakened to know 
itself — the Soul is born. It has completed 
degrees enough of the circle of existence 
to be able to recognize itself as distinct 
from form. It is born to a recognition of 
itself in the sphere of involution. It then 
constitutes a link, as it were ; and this is 
or may be a conscious realization between 
the conscious animal and the self-conscious 
God. 

46 



ITS REALIZATION 

The birth of the Soul is not, therefore, 
on the plane of evolution. The Soul is not 
created, but begotten ; it is the involved. 
The Ideal, having a celestial initiative, is 
occult within the Soul, and when the Self 
awakens to itself, it finds the Ideal as one 
with itself. 



47 



THE IDEAL 



" Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise 
From outward things whate'er you may believe. 
There is an inmost center in us all, 
Where truth abides in fullness ; . . . 

and to know 

Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly 
The demonstration of a truth, its birth, 
And you trace back the influence to its spring 
And source within us, where broods a radiance 

vast, 
To be elicited ray by ray as chance shall 

favor." 

— Browning. 



48 



ITS REALIZATION 

The Content of the Ideal. 

By the spiritual insight, the content of the 
Ideal is found to be identical with that of the 
Self. It cannot be greater, it is not less. 
The content of the Ideal does not appear to 
the spiritual perception to be intellectual 
development, nor culture, nor refinement, nor 
yet a rich sense-life, nor all of these com- 
bined. These are the loves and necessities, 
not of the Self in its absolute, but of the 
Self in its relative nature. These belong 
to the phenomenal aspect of the Self. 
Mental development, culture, a life in the 
senses, are necessary collaterals and adjuncts 
of the purely human relationships in the 
State, society, school, church, family. But 
they form no part of the content of the 
subjective, eternal Self. Neither does the 
Ideal depend upon these corollaries of exist- 
ence to enable it to unfold and realize its 
own perfection. That which is in part 
passes away when the perfect comes. 
49 



THE IDEAL 

The Light of the Sun. 

Has there not been a ray of light — a 
flash of intuition, a gleam of soul-wisdom ? 
one ray as clear and pure as a gem of the 
deep ? Did you, at such a moment, stop to 
ask whence ? whence that ray ? And, from 
the depths of the realm from which and in 
which that ray appeared, did there not come 
a certainty, which needed no reason nor logic 
to enforce, that that ray was but a promise, 
and that the perception of one intuitive truth 
is a prophecy that the Soul encompasses the 
Light of all truth ! The content of the 
Soul, then, is not the intuition merely of a 
ray of light. 

Light, a flood of Light, the Light of the 
Sun, is the content of the Ideal. 

Freedom. 

Has there not been a time, even though 
it were as brief as a robin's flight from the 
tree-top to the margin of the stream which 
5o 



ITS REALIZATION 

mirrored it, when the earth, body, discord, 
experience, were left far in the valley below, 
and the Soul floated in the atmosphere of 
its own freedom — free from Maya's chang- 
ing sands, Sansara's vortices of Life ? In 
the depth of the Soul, where that freedom's 
flight was born, was there not a perfect 
assurance that the moment's escape into 
liberation was a prophecy of absolute and 
eternal bliss and freedom, the true heritage 
of the Soul from the foundation of the world ? 
To be in existence, yet realizing liberation 
from gravitation and limitation of every 
nature, is the significance of that momentary 
flight of freedom. 

Freedom is the content of the Ideal. 

Omnipotence, 

Desire overcome, fear vanquished ! Who 

has not felt a wave of power rise and swell 

through his being? Power to Be, power to 

withstand. You are conscious of power ? 

5i 



THE IDEAL 

To what degree ? To overcome, and to 
stand secure in that consciousness. Then 
comes a deeper realization ; namely, that 
power is limitless ; and that the infinity of 
power is the source of supply. And this 
deepened realization is the gateway to the 
yet diviner consciousness that the finite- 
Infinite supply of all power cannot be ex- 
hausted. Drink freely from the source of 
all, from the fullness of God! — you cannot 
exhaust the opulence of Divinity. 

Omnipotence is the content of the Ideal. 

Omniscience, 

Yes ! the Soul is conscious of its own 
nature. It realizes its own sovereignty in 
the sphere of Being. There is a deep soul- 
realization — My redeemer liveth ; my Soul 
is immortal ; Divinity is all in all. Such 
divine realization, gathering certainty and 
definiteness from the halo of its own Being, 
sweeps the Soul into the realm of ecstasy. 
52 



ITS REALIZATION 

The Soul is translated into its own heaven 
of wisdom, into the sphere of causality, 
where evil, error and darkness are forever 
disintegrated. 

Omniscience is the content of the Ideal. 

Omnipresence. 

When the Soul transcends all conscious- 
ness of things and life phenomenal, and 
loses touch with the conditions and rela- 
tions of experience, it is indrawn into the 
holy of holies not made with hands, and 
melts away as an influx of the immanent 
Presence. 

Like a cloud of fragrance, a mist of glory, 
an inverted bowl of etheric light, whose 
zenith transcends that of the blue sky as 
the Light of Spirit transcends the light of 
the sun, that Presence hovers and permeates 
and suffuses ! It lifts and expands, until it 
embraces, touches, encompasses all within 
itself. 

53 



THE IDEAL 

That Presence sinks into the Omnipres- 
ence, Cosmos leaps forth from the night of 
chaos, and the Omnipresence is in all and 
through all and above all. In the cosmos 
of things, space is not only filled with it, 
but is swallowed up in its glorious embrace. 
The dense and opaque earth is made the 
transparent and lucid abode of Omnipresent 
Being. 

Omnipresence is the content of the Ideal. 

Omniconsciousness. 

The Soul, indrawn, abides in the sanctum 
of its own Being, where its ever deepening 
consciousness of the Omnipresence emerges 
into the cosmic-consciousness. No bounds, 
no height, no depth, no birth, no death ; no 
time, no space, — all forms of Being are 
indrawn, and held at the center, uncreate. 
A glory surpassing the brightness of the 
thought illumines the subject ; it emanates, 
reaching all things on the side of their 
54 



ITS REALIZATION 

involution, bringing them to the occult per- 
ception that the oneness of all is realized 
in and through their participating in and 
reflecting Being. 

The lucidity of the reflecting and reflected 
becomes the luminosity of the reflection. 
The object then becomes the reflection 
through the media and solvent of the re- 
flector. 

The Light breaks down all barriers be- 
tween the form or object and the content 
or subject. The consciousness of limitation, 
separateness, merges into the deeper and 
diviner consciousness of Being, Oneness, 
Unity. The reflection is thrown back to 
the reflected, and the law of the One is no 
longer merely formulated on the tablet of 
stone, but is spoken forth by the word in- 
carnate, aglow with Light. This is omni- 
consciousness ; it is the resolvent of evil, 
struggle, fear, desire ; it is the mystic seal 
of peace, unity and realization. 
55 



THE IDEAL 

Omniconsciousness is the content of the 
Ideal. 

Omnilove. 

In the deep and sacred silence, the Spirit 
of freedom severs the last fetter that binds 
the Soul to the earth. The Soul, absolved, 
floats in ecstatic bliss in the supernal 
sphere of omniconsciousness, and drinks 
from the everlasting fountain of unspeak- 
able love. 

O Love Divine of the Omniconsciousness ! 
Eternal compassion reaches up, from the 
horizon that links the earth and sea, to the 
zenith in the blue, and then descends like 
a beatitude and benediction, alike upon the 
just and unjust. 

O thou supernal love ! — a gleam, a glow ; 
a flash, a flame. A consciousness of thy 
Light is a realization of the eternity of the 
now. Love, celestial, divine, ineffable ! 

Omnilove is the content of the Ideal. 

56 



ITS REALIZATION 

Christ-consciousness. 

Insphered thus in love, at once transcend- 
ent and immanent, sustaining all in unity, the 
Self hears the voice speak from the depths 
of the unutterable silence, from that sphere 
where the everlasting fire glows in the heart 
of the All. The voiceless voice sayeth : — 

O child of the Infinite, thou art worthy 
and efficient. Oh, consecrate thyself to the 
Soul-life. Naught else is worthy of thee, O 
child of the Infinite ! Within thee is the 
One ; thou art omnipotent, omniscient, omni- 
conscious. Consecration will bring thee to 
the full realization that thou and the Father 
are one, and in the fullness and fruition of 
time there will blossom in thee the con- 
sciousness of the Christ. 

The Indwelling God, the Christ-conscious- 
ness, is the content of the Ideal. 

All that Divinity is, that man is ; but 
man is to realize Divinity, and Divinity is 
57 



THE IDEAL 

to be realized in man. The kingdom of 
heaven is within you. 

If man were not potentially God, God 
could not be man apotheosized. Man's 
possession and celestial heritage is power, 
light, wisdom, love, together with a con- 
sciousness that Divinity has placed no limit- 
ation upon the capacity and degree of his 
realization. Otherwise, man is not man, but 
of the lower kingdom. When unfolded and 
realized, the content of the Ideal is Light, 
freedom, omnipotence, omniscience, omni- 
consciousness, omnilove, consecration. 

For ages and eons the Soul may place 
limitations and shackles upon itself. But 
while it is thus submerged in the relative 
and finite, it can neither unfold nor realize 
itself. It is not Divinity that places limita- 
tions upon the Self ; they are imposed and 
maintained only by the finite. 

The content of the Ideal is, therefore, 
the whole of what one is, lifted into con- 
58 



ITS REALIZATION 

sciousness. You, perfect, unfolded, are re- 
flected in the Divine mirror. Divinity sees 
the pure, white lily blossoming even in the 
seed. The ideated man insphered in a lucid 
and transparent halo of his own Divinity 
stands perfect, finished in the consciousness 
of God. 

Doubt not, falter not, deny not. The 
Infinite is enthroned within the finite. There 
may be a vague, unrealized Presence of the 
Ideal. That half-conscious void leads to the 
unfoldment and realization of the Divinity- 
consciousness in man. 

For this consummation devoutly to be 
wished, the worlds were whirled into space ; 
the evolution of fauna and flora was ordained ; 
the Logos, begotten, not created, came forth 
from the heart of the All, bearing with it 
the potency, promise and prophecy of the 
Absolute. It speaks the word of peace to the 
hosts of humanity that men may thus know 
they, too, are not created but begotten. 
59 



THE IDEAL 



f Great are the symbols of Being, 
But that which is symboled is greater. 
Vast the create and beheld, 
But vaster the inward Creator." 



60 



ITS REALIZATION 

The Unfoldment of the Ideal. 

The unfoldment of the Ideal ! What 
words may set it forth ? The more the 
unfoldment of the spirit, the less the need 
of words for its expression. It brings a 
deep, rich satisfaction, too sacred to utter 
to ears that hear and understand not. 

There are moments which for blessedness 
and glory one would not exchange for eons 
of ordinary life. It is not life, but realiza- 
tion, which renders the Immanency a reality. 
Only when one is ready and worthy of the 
vision ; only when one would rather behold 
that vision than to think or to live ; only 
when no other inspiration will meet the 
need of the Soul's aspiration, do such 
moments come. Before the vision comes, 
there is overcoming, self-abnegation ; tears, 
despair — then the flood of Light that dis- 
pels all darkness. That vision is ineffable. 
It comes when you are alone. You cannot 
show it to any one, you cannot translate its 
61 



THE IDEAL 

glory into language of earth. Another can- 
not tell what came to him in the sacred 
hush when the veil was rent and Isis ap- 
peared in a heaven of splendor. 

The voice of the unfolded spirit — is not 
that the Word which is heard and under- 
stood by those who have ears to hear and 
eyes to see ? " Let him deny himself, and 
take up the cross, and follow me," were the 
golden words of Him who had lived in the 
heart of the Central Flame. 

The cross, we take it, is not found in 
serving Divinity. It is not service that con- 
stitutes the cross ; the service is love. He 
who declares there is no cross will yet find 
it. Each makes his own and carries it for 
his own crucifixion. What Soul has not 
groaned in agony when it awakened to it- 
self and fully realized how it had lived and 
thought literally engulfed in phenomena which 
blinded it to reality; engrossed in attach- 
ments which enshrouded it in the shadow 
62 



ITS REALIZATION 

of its own dark desires, shutting out from 
its gaze the Vision of the Soul ? Oh ! the 
heart-ren dings and mental revulsions, when 
the awakened Soul sees clearly that the 
relationships of life, held most sacred, are 
for the most part matters of desire and 
selfishness. We look and behold the prints 
of the chains of desire upon the flesh — the 
same chains we called duty, love, service ; 
the enlightened and awakened Soul now 
sees them as they are, of the earth, earthly 
and earthy. Oh ! for freedom from the 
past, freedom from attachment and enthrall- 
ment, that the Soul may sing, soar, untram- 
meled, on the wings of Aspiration. 

"To be attached to material things/' it 
is written in the Vedas, "is to be chained. 
To be without attachment is to be free." 

It is desire that leads the self out into 
objectivity and imprisons it in diversity, 
multiplicity. Fix to the cross the sense- 
life, and the Soul will rise with aspiration 

63 



THE IDEAL 

into the realm of subjectivity, liberated by- 
unity and oneness. 

Dante's unfoldment of spirit began when 
Beatrice unveiled her divine countenance to 
him ; with steadfastness he gazed upon that 
celestial vision, and he was transformed. 
This is the Law. As he was transformed 
into her likeness, gravitation lost its force, 
levitation wafted him through the celestial 
realms of Paradise, until finally he beheld 
his Beatrice enthroned in the " heart of the 
Holy White Rose of the Empyrean." A 
glimpse of the unveiled Soul is the key to 
realization. Seek that vision ; love it, con- 
secrate yourself to it, and it will exalt you 
into a Paradise of the profoundest and divin- 
est realizations. 



6 4 



ITS REALIZATION 



" ' Let the visions of the night or of the day 
Come, as they will ; and many a time they 

come, 
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, 
This light that strikes his eye-ball is not light, 
This air that smites his forehead is not air 
But vision — aye, his very hand and foot — 
In moments when he feels he cannot die, 
And knows himself no vision to himself, 
Nor to the high God a vision, nor to that One 
Who rose again ; ye have seen what ye have 

seen/ 

" So spake the king : I knew not all he 
meant.' ' 

— Tennyson. 



65 



THE IDEAL 

The Realization of the Ideal, 

Self-realization, the realization of the Ideal, 
is not self-abnegation. The unfolding Soul 
does not hold before itself the mirror of 
self-abnegation. That is not its conscious 
purpose ; and yet, the realized self abstains 
from the sense-life. All that is on the 
lower plane is uplifted, the crude is trans- 
muted into the fine, gross into gold, and all 
is consecrated to the Most High. 

Jesus took his three best-beloved disciples 
upon the high mountain apart, and was 
there transfigured before them, and his face 
shone as the sun, and his raiment was white 
as the Light. When the Son of man stands 
upon the mountain-top apart, has he not 
carried the valley to the summit ? Is there 
anything left below ? 

The Son of man becomes the Son of God. 

The consciousness of the particular is sunk 

in the consciousness of the universal ; the 

consciousness of Divinity absolves him from 

66 



ITS REALIZATION 

the consciousness of man. This is the 
Christ-consciousness. It is the fullness of 
eternality, ideality ; consecration to the Father 
which is in Heaven. There is nothing below, 
without or beyond ; it is all in all. The 
Son of man transfigured is the sum-total — 
unity and unison of God and man. To the 
Christ, God is ; God alone is. 

Realization is not in doing, but in being; 
not in activity, but in rest. It is not found 
in the turmoil of phenomenal Nature and 
human nature, but in the stillness of the 
Silence. It is not the result of evolution 
and development, but involution and unfold- 
ment. Realize the Ideal by being it. 



67 



THE IDEAL 

Doing issues from Being. 

Doing issues from Being, as conduct 
from the Ideal realized, as sunlight from 
the sun. Beneficence and loving-kindness 
descend from the sphere of Causality; they 
are not creatures on the plane of effects. 
Doing will be pure, holy, God-like, only when 
it emanates from the Ideal. The love of the 
Highest comprehends, as its metaphysical 
and spiritual content, the love of all that the 
highest encompasses. If love of the Highest 
rules supreme, there is harmony and heavenly 
good-will. If there is love for the good and 
true in all and everywhere, there will be 
peace in both the inner and outer worlds. 

The Love of Divinity includes both the 
love of man and peace. But is not the 
love for and of humanity, per se, attachment 
to the perishable, the transient ? Is not the 
love of form idolatrous ? Can such attach- 
ment bring peace either in the spiritual or 
material worlds ? 

68 



ITS REALIZATION 

Spiritual love — and there is no other, 
for " love " on the earth -plane is a mis- 
nomer — brings a sweet peace " which passeth 
all understanding,'' and it reigns from the 
Center to the circumference of Being. It 
issues forth from the highest and encircles 
all things and beings, because they and it 
are divine. A consciousness that love is 
not personal but universal liberates the Soul 
from all attachments, and that liberation is 
peace ; it is a benediction from the sky. 

The hush of peace silences the clamor 
of desire, which expresses through dispute, 
argument, war. This peace liberates man 
from the valley - conditions, and gives him 
possession of the heights. Man must be free 
not only from himself, but from all selves. 
Liberation gained, freedom is granted to 
every flower, fish, bird, animal, man. 

Divinity places no limitation anywhere in 
the cosmos or in the universe. Every tiny 
atom of protoplasm is free to realize its 

6 9 



THE IDEAL 

own ordained destiny. The law of its being 
may however, for a time, be opposed or 
thwarted by the external impositions of force 
or influence of chaos; but finally, when the 
speck of protoplasm has finished with desire 
and dispute, and overcomes and awakes to 
itself, it will find that the path of freedom 
lies within its own sanctuary. It outworks 
its destined end by releasing itself from the 
bondage, not of humanity, but of the self 
and external influences. 



70 



ITS REALIZATION 

The Spiritual Brotherhood. 

The peace which drops down from heaven 
lulls to sleep evil and separateness. In the 
awakened consciousness there prevails loving- 
kindness, and a brotherhood obtains. 

This brotherhood rests on the conscious- 
ness that peace and love have a heavenly 
initiative and that the true brotherhood is 
of Divinity. That brotherhood neglects no 
human kind, except the insincere, who are 
already dead. Only the earnest live, and 
they alone may become initiates. In that 
brotherhood, based on the realization of 
Divinity, no man manipulates his brother 
for personal ends or gain. The all-seeing 
eye of his realized self sees in his brother 
not merely the human but the divine ; and 
he cherishes and holds sacred man because 
he is the embodiment of Divinity. In the 
brotherhood, universal peace reigns. The 
sword of personal criticism, the deadliest 
weapon in the hand of man, the weapon 
71 



THE IDEAL 

that rebounds from the slain and destroys 
the slayer, is forever sheathed in its scab- 
bard. 

The soothsayers walked about the Forum 
and streets of Rome smiling into one 
another's eyes, each silently recognizing in 
the other his own hollow pretenses and gross 
hypocrisies. Poor soothsayers ! they were the 
product of that ancient idolatrous and heathen 
civilization. But are not the insincere and 
hypocritical of this time, even though they 
be the product of Christian culture in the 
gala-day of the world's civilization, on a 
level with the Roman soothsayer in his 
decadence ? Has the insincere ever caught 
even a glimpse of the Ideal, the standard 
of perfection ? 

The earnest alone are alive to truth and 
love and Divinity ; they alone are true and 
worthy to speak the truth to friend and 
foe, in storm and in sunshine. So akin is 
the earnest soul to the fire of the Central 
72 



ITS REALIZATION 

Flame that its glow is the illumination from 
the Center shining through the shadow of 
earth. Oh, to be the Ideal ! then we should 
stand face to face, with the truth unveiled 
between us. " Whatever ye do, do it heartily, 
as to the Lord, and not unto men." 



73 



THE IDEAL 

The Identity of the Ideal and the Self. 

The Voice of the Spirit affirms from the 
circumference that the deeps of you and 
the heights of you are implicit in the Ideal. 
The Voice of the Spirit affirms from the 
center that the depths and heights of the 
Ideal are implicit in you. There is not 
only a correspondence between the Self and 
the Ideal, but an identity. Consciousness, 
sub, normal and super, is all-inclusive in 
capacity and implication. The finite and 
the Infinite, the relative and the Absolute, 
the created and the Begotten, existence and 
Being, are united in the everlasting and 
eternal One, at the Center. The Ideal is 
the all of what was, is, and is to come in 
the sphere of Involution. 

A love for that Ideal will bind you to 
it, as the magnet holds what its two-fold 
polarity draws. 

Is the attraction still for the earth and 
the physical ? — or is the affinity for the 
74 



ITS REALIZATION 

heavenly and celestial ? Spiritual affinity 
will keep the Soul true to its beloved. 

Stop in the wild career of Maya. Wait, 
listen. Be conscious of the over-shadowing 
peace. Know that when affinity draws you 
upward, Eros, abiding in the dwelling-place 
of perfection, will speak from the upper air, 
and you will hear the resounding echo of 
that Word through all the spheres of the 
Self. That Word will be the definition of 
Love; it will exclude magnetic and hypnotic 
influence of personality and all attachments 
on the plane of Kama Rupa. 

In the perfect and imperishable, Love is 
centered. That Love shall abide forever 
and forever. 

There is a vast universal orchestra. Every 
musician has in his possession an instrument 
perfect and infinite in possibility. Shall 
each player take his key-note from his 
brother ? Or shall they all go clamoring 
to the first-violonist for his key-note ? No. 
75 



THE IDEAL 

There is a Great Tone, symbolized by the 
tuning-fork ; with it every instrument is to 
be made to vibrate in unison with the one 
tone. Then a symphony of harmony, with- 
out a discordant sound, will fill the world. 

Every child of the Infinite has in his 
possession a harp with a thousand strings. 
Let each instrument be keyed to harmonize 
with the Infinite Tone ; each consciousness 
be tuned in unison with Omniconsciousness : 
let the finite strike the key-note of the 
Infinite, — then discord, which grows out of 
the futile endeavor to disregard the Great 
Tone, will be dissipated, as darkness before 
the light, and there will be peace on earth 
and good-will to all men. 

When one is ready to give one's life for 
the beloved, when one is ready to love the 
beloved for its sake and not for the sake 
of one's own pleasure, happiness, health, 
prosperity, the Vision will appear in the 
upper realm, and the Voice from the clouds 
76 



ITS REALIZATION 

will speak : — " This is my beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased." 

In the Empyrean is Beatrice enthroned ; 
but Dante drank first from the river Lethe, 
and forgot evil, error, mistakes and all 
estrangement from the Ideal ; and then 
from the Eunoe, a branch of the Lethe, 
which " revived in memory his fainting 
virtue " and all pure thought of love and 
true aspirations. Only then was his vision 
sufficiently chaste and holy to behold her 
divine countenance, and he himself "made 
pure and apt enough for mounting to the 
stars." 

The unveiled vision, with naught between 
consciousness and Divinity, is the Ideal. 
In Paradise it is ; there it is nurtured and 
realized. That is the apotheosis of the 
Soul. 

Think madly ; hope exultantly ; love celes- 
tially ; trust divinely. Time shall be when 
all shall be revealed and fulfilled. Clad in 
77 LofC. 



THE IDEAL 

the royal robes of purity and aspiration, 
encircled in love wise and holy, not only 
approach confidently the outer, but enter 
fearlessly the innermost court of your Being. 
There, in the adytum of the Soul, is the 
Ideal supremely sovereign. 

Be still and know that thou art God. 



78 



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NOV 9 1901 



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